Readers Write: Trump and Germany’s Hindenburg fostered instability

Unlike science, where experiments are carried out to support or refute a theory, political science has no way of finding exactly how a new political or economic systems would behave. However,  it is possible to examine a political system and predict its behavior  by performing a feature-by-feature similarity comparison with  a past political system. Some historians question such a comparison since no two governments, past or present, are exactly the same, but most agree that the result of such a comparison is important because it warns us about the dangers of ignoring history and its supposed lessons.

Examining history and past political systems lead us to the Paul Von Hindenburg era that seems to best represent the  urrent political climate in the United States.

Paul Hindenburg was the president of Germany from 1925 to 1934. During his presidency , despite despising Hitler and his Nazi party,  Hindenburg was a key player in the political  instability that  eventually  led to their rise in power  and  the appointment of  Adolf Hitler as a German chancellor in January 1933, which gave the Nazi regime  badly needed legitimacy.

Analysis of President Hindenburg’s  government with that of President  Trump’s  first term has led to the following similarities:

1. They both had an unstable administration with many crisis (during his presidency, Hindenburg had seven chancellors, three of them over a nine-month period. Most of them ruled by decree rather than through parliamentary majorities )
2. They both tried very hard to appease right-wing critics.
3. They both had some far-right advisers in their administration, at different times (in the case of Hindenburg,  Franz  Von Papen, who established a rightist authoritarian government in 1932, helped Hitler  to become chancellor)
4. They both stripped away constraints on executive power.
5. They both tried to break down the democratic principles and norms (in the case of Hindenburg, there was a gradual degradation of democracy that led to the  formation  of  Nazi-regime)
6. They both tried to make their political opponents a threat to law and order( in both  governments the left was compared to Fascism or Communism)
7. Both presidencies were riddled with propaganda (in the case of Hindenburg after the Nazis seizure of power in 1933, Paul Goebbels’s propaganda ministry quickly gained and exerted control over the news media. His success is often attributed to use of the same lies repeated again and again. The propaganda included seeking to change moral beliefs, attacks on the Christian churches and anti-Semitism )
8. They both showed affection for Jewish people (one of Hindenburg’s major disagreement with Hitler was treatment of the Jews. Jewish people overwhelmingly voted for him even though a famous German Jewish philosopher  by the name of Theodore Lessing opposed the rise of Hindenburg as president  in the 1925 election because of his far-right views. He was  murdered  in Czechoslovakia in 1933. This was the first political assassination of an opponent of the Nazi regime outside of Germany, and received worldwide condemnation.)

It is important to note that Trump is no Hindenburg and today America is nowhere near what it was in Germany in the 1920s or 1930s. Nonetheless, white nationalist hate groups have grown significantly during the Trump era.

History has shown that when the head of a country makes mistake after mistake, it will eventually lead to disaster. In the case of Hindenburg, if so many mistakes were not made Hitler would have not had a chance to become chancellor.  Hitler’s personality plus the fact that he was Austrian-born (a  stateless immigrant living in Germany for more than 19 years) made him unelectable in any major election in Germany back in those days. In fact, in the last election of 1932, before World War II, Hitler, who became a German citizen just weeks before, lost to Hindenburg by a big margin. Hindenburg, being a war hero and national figure, was so popular with the German public and its army that he could have legally removed Hitler from the chancellorship position anytime. But instead he went on to give Hitler dictatorial  power when he signed the Enabling Act into law . This happened after Hindenburg witnessed Nazi lawlessness, brutality and terror against mainly political opponents and the Jewish people

Therefore,  it  was Hindenburg who contributed  to the destruction of Germany  and ultimately to the rest of the world that is still reverberating today.

Shahram Aziz

Great Neck